Ivica Racan

Ivica Racan (24 February 1944-29 April 2007) was Prime Minister of Croatia from 27 January 2000 to 23 December 2003, succeeding Zlatko Matesa and preceding Ivo Sanader. He was also President of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia from 1990 to 2007.

Biography
Ivica Racan was born in Ebersbach, Saxony, Nazi Germany in 1944, the son of a mother who was interned there at a labor camp; he and his mother survived the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945. After World War II, the family returned to Croatia, and Racan joined the League of Communists of Croatia in 1961 and graduated from the Zagreb Faculty of Law in 1970.

In 1972, he was elected to the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia, and he became a supporter of Croatian autonomy; this made him rivals with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. In 1989, he was elected President of the League of Communists of Croatia, and he joined the Slovenian delegation in walking out of the 1990 League of Communists of Yugoslavia party congress in protest against Milosevic's anti-autonomy measures. In 1990, Racan became the President of the new Social Democratic Party of Croatia, the League of Communists' successor. From 1990 to 1991, he was Leader of the Opposition, and the Croatian Social Liberal Party became the new opposition party in 1991.

In 2000, Racan allied with the Liberals to form a coalition government, displacing the Croatian Democratic Union. Racan sought to make a break from Croatia's nationalist and authoritarian past, but his six-party coalition government was plagued with factional struggles, and he was forced to resign in 2002. From 2003 to 2007, he was Leader of the Opposition, and he died from kidney cancer in 2007.